Celebrity chef Jose Andres\u2019s disdain for red tape is one of the reasons why his food charity found itself coordinating the humanitarian effort in Gaza when seven of its workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The aid workers for World Central Kitchen (WCK) were killed late Monday when their convoy was hit shortly after overseeing the unloading of 100 tons of food brought to Gaza by sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Israel took responsibility for the attack, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledging a \u201ctragic\u201d and \u201cunintentional\u201d incident and vowing to \u201cdo everything\u201d to prevent a recurrence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WCK began last month moving food aid to starving people in northern Gaza via a maritime corridor from Cyprus, in collaboration with Spanish charity Open Arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This decision followed Israel\u2019s refusal to allow the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) to deliver food to northern Gaza after claims that some agency staff had taken part in the massive October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel, and that many others had ties to Hamas and other Gaza groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oscar Camps, director of Open Arms, said in an interview with Reuters that the maritime route between Cyprus and Gaza had been open since December 20, but no organization had used it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Charity workers constructed a makeshift jetty from rubble and unloaded the aid just meters away from bombardments amid warnings from Israel that it could not guarantee their security, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Andres, who is Spanish and American, said on X he decided to get involved in the maritime aid delivery after an invitation from the Cypriot government, hoping other aid providers would follow suit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said on March 26 that 67 WCK kitchens were operating in Gaza, feeding 350,000 people a day. Operations are now suspended following the Israeli airstrike on the WCK convoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier in the conflict, WCK had partnered with restaurants and hospitals in Israel to feed people displaced or injured by the shock October 7 Hamas attack on the country, and then switched in February to helping air drops of aid over Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tomer Goldberg, an Israeli entrepreneur, said WCK played a vital role in the finance and distribution of meals to displaced Israelis after the Hamas invasion, assisting the Brothers in Arms\u201d volunteer network that organized civilian relief efforts. \u201cThey are amazing people,\u201d he told Army Radio on Tuesday evening, hailing WCK\u2019s efficiency, concern, and non-political nature. \u201cThey have no political agenda,\u201d he said. \u201cThey help feed hungry refugees, period.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
War erupted on October 7 when Hamas led a massive cross-border attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took a further 253 hostages. Israel responded with a military offensive to destroy Hamas, topple its Gaza regime, and free the hostages, of whom 130 remain in captivity, some of them dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hamas claims some 32,000 Gazans have been killed in the war, an unverifiable figure that does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel says it has killed over 13,000 gunmen. Over 250 IDF soldiers have been killed in the Strip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Adaptive\u2019 The NGO describes itself as \u201cfirst to the frontlines,\u201d using an \u201centrepreneurial and adaptive\u201d approach to \u201cerr on the side of feeding people expediently vs. asking for permission or following systems and bureaucracy that lack urgency and flexibility.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen others are assessing the situation, we are already feeding, and in the process we learn what is going on, not the other way around,\u201d Andres told the Spanish language edition of Vanity Fair in a recent interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The charity says it entered Ukraine five days after Russia\u2019s invasion in February 2022 and set up restaurants in five cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Born in 1969 in a coal mining town in Spain\u2019s northern Asturias region, Andres worked as an apprentice at Ferran Adria\u2019s experimental El Bulli restaurant near Barcelona before moving to the US in 1991, where he set up tapas restaurant Jaleo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His company ThinkFoodGroup now owns more than 20 restaurants including one with two Michelin stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He has cultivated relationships with some of the US\u2019s most powerful people, receiving a $100 million donation from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2021 and striking up a rapport with former US President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Obama\u2019s government in 2014 named him an \u201cOutstanding American by Choice,\u201d an award given to naturalized US citizens who have achieved extraordinary things, following up with the National Humanities Medal in 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His relationship with Obama\u2019s successor Donald Trump was less cordial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Times of Israel)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Celebrity chef Jose Andres\u2019s disdain for red tape is one of the reasons why his food charity found itself coordinating the humanitarian effort in Gaza when seven of its workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike. The aid workers for World Central Kitchen (WCK) were killed late Monday when their convoy was hit shortly after …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":9906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[184,307,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-issues","category-main-news","category-172"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9905"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9908,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9905\/revisions\/9908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/strong>Founded by Andres in 2010 after he traveled to Haiti to help following an earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people, WCK has fast become one of the leading providers of emergency aid at scenes of natural disaster or human conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n